To really like Hyacinth Bucket :)

[twoblackdogs]

She was always clean, well dressed and with not a hair out of place
Her house was always spotless
She never hesitated with what was proper and what was not
She always meant well
She knew all rules and had manners
She loved her son very much
She never doubted herself, not for a moment
She never said no to all church and community things
She was always very cheerful

And this all was extremely insufferable :) because she wanted everybody to live like that, very properly
But if we think a bit... Was it really too bad? No? Or it's better to live like Daisy and Onslow?

Please don't take this too seriously, let's have some fun.

BTW I love Mills and Boon love stories like Daisy does.

She reminds me of my nana. I loved my nana and going to her house in the summer holidays as a teenager. It was spotless and felt like respite compared to the chaos at home. She was so glamorous with her makeup and hair blowdryed everyday. She always dressed nice too and chatted to everyone.

I was surprised to find out recently that 'Hyacinth Bucket' was actually a character played by the actress Patricia Routledge, and 'Keeping Up Appearances' was in fact a situation comedy and not the fly-on the wall documentary that I had supposed for nearly five years.

It makes one wonder what the BBC do with our licence fee, seemingly squandering it on make believe television - it's just one step away from that Tik-Tok stuff that is pumped out by the youngsters of day.

Roy Clarke always had pathos in his writing. Usually people trying to escape something but they were doomed never to do so.

Granville in ‘Open All Hours’ desperately wanted to be loved and was determined he wouldn’t end up like Arkwright. He cannot escape though and, like Arkwright is left to bring up a child from a brief liaison and morphes into what he so very much wanted to avoid.

The characters in ‘Last of the Summer Wine’; Howard never had the courage to leave Pearl, Clegg never remarried. Foggy desperately wanted to be remembered as a military hero, even though he had been a sign writer.

Hyacinth wants to break away from her upbringing but something always pulls her back. I think all the characters were played more sympathetically from Series 2 onwards. I love Hyacinth, she was kind, helpful and you’d never go hungry or thirsty at her house! KUA is my comfort TV.

I think she's one of the best written and imagined sit com characters ever

Keeping up appearances was on air when I was at secondary school and I loved it even then. Each character is brilliantly written and played. Everyone knows a Hyacinth, that's its appeal.

I loved her expressions every time she arrived at Onslow and Daisy's road!

And onslow's car backfiring. .no matter how many times I've seen it I still laugh!

Hyacinth would 100% be on mumsnet. I agree she wasn't a bad person and probably loved her son too much !

Agree the Emmet character hasn't aged well, he oozes misogyny.

It's about snobbery. It was of its time and gave an outlet to laugh at socially mobile middle class folk moving from the council estate to the new build estate in a nice southern town, and affecting airs and graces as to how they imagined society was in their new neighbourhoods. The sad thing is a modern version wouldn't be possible now, because the ladders have been drawn up and not enough people would identify with it. ☹️

Programs like Kepping up Appearance make me feel happy. They are the kind of thing i put on a rainy day, with a cold. It just makes me smile from beginning to end. Love Hyacinth!

She reminds me of my late grandma. Obsessed with what other people thought, and wildly out of touch in so many ways.
When I had my induction day aged 11 at my local (independent, slightly snooty) girls' school, she was convinced I needed to wear this horrific knee length dress and straw boater type hat as "that's what all the doctors' and solicitors' daughters will be wearing." I furiously protested but to no avail.
Where the other girls in similar attire? Were they fuck. I will never forget the silence that descended as I scurried in dressed like an 11 year old Hyacinth.
But, like the real Hyacinth, she really was a kind and loving woman, and genuinely did her best to look after everyone. I do miss her.

She is one of those characters who is insufferable, yet somehow endearing. I absolutely loved her character. We quote her all the time!!

Here it is!

Sunday night tv. I used to love KUA but hated Sunday night tv!

Clips of KUA have been appearing on my FB feed recently. The more I watch the more I get. This led me to the fan wiki.

I was surprised to read that Daisy and Onslow had a daughter- I didn’t know that. I had a vague memory of one very tender episode where they reminisced about a baby or child they had lost, but the wiki didn’t mention that. I remember it as the one time Onslow ever showed any care for Daisy.

The Young Hyacinth episode aired when my PFB was only 2 days old so I completely missed it. I remember seeing it advertised about halfway through the month before it aired and being so excited to see it. The wiki says it bombed.

I'm not gonna flame you lol but wouldn't it be nice if people were judged on what sort of a person they are rather than how their garden or house look. My mum used to get on my tits when my daughter was a toddler because she used to love playing in mud all the time (my daughter lol not my mum) and I used to dress her in playing out clothes (not scruffy but clothes that could get dirty) to play in the garden and my mum used to take her up to her house sometimes to help her potter around her garden anyway I found out that my mum had bought her outfits that she changed her into for when they had to nip out to the shop or whatever which stayed at her house 🤨 made me feel like I couldn't look after my daughter properly and it upset me a bit. I can be a bit of a nob though so I made a point of deliberately sending her in her play scruffs every time or with her T-shirts that she used to do painting and drawing in lol it was very passive aggressive but the look on my mums face made me feel better 😂 my daughter is 14 now and she still comes home covered in mud which I love. I think the point of my story is that I hate judgemental people and hyacinth reminds me of my mother lol

Wasn't he divorced? And what did he do actually, besides living with his spinster sister in her very small house and playing piano now and then? He even couldn't afford his own house, right?

Hit the nail
on the head

’

Liz/Elizabeth was married. Her husband worked away in Saudi Arabia. Oil drilling IIRC.

I take your point though, neither Liz nor Emmet seemed to do anything much.

Thanks ❤

I loved the episode where Hyacinh got drunk on the very posh and very undrinkable wine she had bought at an auction. She suddenly wasn't so stiff and proper anymore. So very human :)

Lovely thread. We still quote it all those years on. Especially when I'm a passenger in DH's car, "Richard, watch out for..!"

Oh.
I guess oil drilling paid well enough, so Liz could live a life of leisure. And her dear brother Emmett just took the easy way out and let his sister pay for everything? Not nice.

I loved the ' lady of the house speaking' manner of answering the phone!

My god thank you for this 😍

I'm a KUA super-fan and had no idea it existed!

I think her friend was the nice happy medium, loved her issues with the china cups😅

Hyacinth was an equal mix of lovely and annoying.

I love the fact that the actress was in a relationship with Pat St Clement. Makes me laugh the idea of the mix of Hyacinth and Pat Butcher. (Though, yes I know they weren't actually them, but the thought amuses me none the less!)

no she'd be the one who mistook him for the gardener.